It is heart-warming to see how many people are willing to help you as soon as you start restoring a VW bus. An acquaintance of my best friend Niek happened to have a sandblast cabinet at work, which he offered us to use to sandblast all the small parts of the van. Obviously we embraced this free sandblasting opportunity, but after our first day of sandblasting we figured that sandblasting is a time consuming job that is not worth driving 30 kilometres, every time you need to sandblast a part.
Although we had never seen a sandblast cabinet in our lives before, we unanimously decided to build one our own; much simpler then the professional ones, but just as effective. Using only wooden beams and chipboard, you can get yourself a pretty decent sandblast cabinet. Preferably use old material, it saves you money and it will damage anyway. Please refer to the list below, with basic material you will need to build your own cabinet:
Wooden beams (approximately 10 m in length and not to thin e.g. 30x50 mm)
Chipboard (for example from an old closet)
Wire mesh (fix this to a frame so you will have something to putt the work piece on)
Glass and a glasscutter
Compressor (min. 6 bar/90 psi)
Light (to light up the work piece)
Sandblast gun and extra nozzles (they wear)
Piece of garden hose (about 50 cm, used to suck up the sandblasting sand)
10 kg of sandblasting sand
Thick rubber gloves
Old vacuum cleaner (used to pump down the dust while sandblasting)
Final tip: make sure the bottom of the cabinet is in an angle or tapered so the sandblasting sand will keep collecting at the bottom of the cabinet. Keep the inlet of the garden hose at the bottom so you will have a constant supply of sand to the gun.
